Changes in mobility in the work force have led many consumers to change health care providers at least as frequently as they change jobs. The mobility of medical records, however, has not kept pace with the mobility of consumers. Most medical records are still recorded in written form at a doctor's office, either on paper or in a computer. Few consumers go to the trouble of maintaining their own private “database” of their medical history. As consumers switch from one provider to the next, they often lose access to crucial personal medical records and health-related insurance information. Even those consumers fortunate enough to have access to their records must go through the trouble of requesting and compiling the records in paper form. As a result, many consumers do not have and cannot provide their complete medical records, including personal medical histories, and records of immunizations, prescriptions and allergies. As a result of this situation, business travelers may find themselves in a new doctor's office without easy access to records. Parents may be unable to provide accurate information about their children. Emergency patients may jeopardize their health without ready access to accurate records. Even the typical medical consumer cannot provide or access their complete records during a routine doctor's office visit. Accordingly, a method and device for providing medical, insurance, and personal information in such instances would be helpful to such consumers.
Changes in the medical care delivery system and an aging population also contribute to the growing need for personal medical information that is readily accessible at any time (i.e., portable) and easily conveyed to medical service providers. More consumers are visiting multiple doctors and specialists than in the past. The need for multiple doctors affects the elderly, chronically ill, managed care patients, and parents with several children especially. Patients are required to fill out multiple forms with each new visit. Without portable, readily accessible information, consumers spend unnecessary time recalling enrollment data and filling out form after form. Ready access to one complete source of such information would greatly enhance the efficiency and accuracy of the medical system.
Furthermore, problems often arise with elderly patients who need to take multiple medications. It is common for such patients to face difficulties in recalling all of their medications and the correct dosages and dosage times. Thus, there is need for a method and device that provides simple, easy, and portable access to medical information, as well as daily medication reminders.
Furthermore, patients who visit multiple specialists may be prescribed medications by different physicians that interact adversely with one another. Easy access to information on a patient's prescriptions could also help to alleviate this problem.
Several systems for providing mobile access to personal medical information are known. One system stores consumer data on credit-card sized “smart cards.” Smart cards are portable data carriers that are embedded with a computer chip that contains a user's personal medical information. The cards are read by smart card readers located in participating emergency response vehicles and by PC-based readers in participating hospitals, physicians' offices, pharmacies, and retirement facilities.
McGauley et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,899,998, is directed to a system of storing personal medical information on smart cards, which may be accessed and updated at PC-based point-of-care stations. Data is entered at a PC station and transferred to a patient's smart card through off-line communications. Data stored on the card may be accessed at any point-of-care station. The patient's data is not sent to the portable device from a server through on-line communications. Instead, distributed databases may be used to update a patient's information through off-line coupling between a point-of-care database and a smart card database. The data is updated by detecting information that is stored on one database and not the other and automatically propagating the most recent data. This system requires both physical presence of the smart card at the point-of-care computer and a card reader for updating the information stored on the card. The physical presence requirement leads to inefficiencies because users cannot gain access to, or update, their information outside the presence of a reader station. Additionally, with smart cards there has been lack of standardization of the technology resulting in poor market penetration of card readers. The cell phone offers a universally accepted platform with high market penetration.
Accordingly, there is a need for a system and method that provides users with easy updating access through on-line communications. There is also a need for a system that provides increased portable accessibility to a user's information as it allows a user to view information at any time and place.
Another known system used to access personal medical information uses the Internet. Many websites offer to store online health care records for consumers. Consumers, however, are concerned with the privacy and security of the web as a place to store their vital, personal information. Hence, such sites have failed to gain broad consumer acceptance.
Thus, there is a need for a method and system that resolves the portability, privacy, and security problems of on-line storage of health care records. More particularly, there is a need for a system that provides users with easy access to their information without the security risk of storing it in a central location that can be hacked into.
Call center clearinghouses are another known form of access to personal health information, which have been used in emergency situations. Subscribers to these services wear identification bracelets with toll free numbers engraved on them. Although these services have gained limited acceptance, consumers may not want to wear the jewelry, because it is viewed as a sign of illness or weakness; in addition, valuable time may be lost in emergency situations by calling the toll free number and waiting to retrieve the patient's medical data. The call center system also does not scale well to handle a large number of calls because of prohibitive labor cost. Thus there is a need for an efficient method to access personal medical information without the need to call and wait for an intermediary to retrieve the data.
Although not related to the medical information field, Martino, U.S. Pat. No. 5,805, 676 discloses a system in which data is entered into a data transaction device, which is also a telephone, for transmission and storage on a database server. This data, however, is not locally stored on the telephone device and thus presents security risks.
Accordingly, there is a need for a method and system that provides for local storage of the user's information on a mobile device, such as a wireless phone. The information may be sent through the Internet (from the server) to the wireless device and then deleted from the server. This provides a user with portable access to their information, which may be helpful in a number of circumstances, such as physicians' office visits and emergency situations, without significant security risks.